In her commentary supporting heavy-handed restrictions on e-cigarette use, Interim City Health Commissioner Jacquelyn Duval-Harvey misses a central point about how and why e-cigarettes are so widely touted as a way to reduce the harm from smoking (“Regulate Baltimore’s e-cigarettes,” Oct. 22).

By banning their use in public and indoor spaces, Baltimore would take away a competitive advantage that public health advocates should want e-cigarettes to have over regular cigarettes.

Ms. Duval-Harvey’s approach would cause the real public health heroes, former smokers who vape, to go outside bars and restaurants with other smokers. She may as well just offer them a light because many are bound to go back to smoking.

MOSCOW, October 18 (RIA Novosti) – The working group of World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) has agreed on a draft decision on e-cigarettes regulation, final decision to be made later on Saturday.

According to the document, released on Friday, the Conference of the Parties invites parties “to consider prohibiting or regulating ENDS [Electronic nicotine delivery systems or electronic cigarettes], including as tobacco products, medicinal products, consumer products, or other categories, as appropriate.”

Smoking used to be a big part of mainstream culture. Tobacco advertisements were prominent in just about all the major media outlets, and there were almost no restrictions on cigarette smoking in public areas, but the turning point came in 1964 when the government recognized the fact that smoking leads to increased mortality rates.

Still, it took a while for tobacco smoking to cracked down upon more seriously across the nation. Today, there are federal laws and local regulations in place that strongly discourage smoking. While these actions have caused many to quit, such measures haven’t been enough to put an end to the problem for good.

Fifty years after the U.S. Surgeon General’s first report about the dangers of smoking, public health officials are wrestling with how to regulate electronic cigarettes, as no government studies address the dangers of these products.

Senate Democrats and public health groups warn e-cigarettes will attract new smokers, including children, who have never used traditional cigarettes before. But others say e-cigarettes can help ween existing smokers off of traditional cigarettes, which are believed to be more harmful.

To this end, the FDA is currently funding 37 studies, but none of them have been completed yet.